Top Democrat considering bill to end transit workers' right to strike


SACRAMENTO -- The head of the Senate Transportation Committee praised Gov. Jerry Brown for preventing Bay Area transit workers from walking off the job Monday and said he is still considering legislation that would permanently take away their right to strike.

Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said in an interview that workers in the Bay Area have rights that few of their colleagues around the state share.

“Of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and the Bay Area are the exception,” he said. “All of the other large systems do not allow transit workers to strike.”

DeSaulnier, who called himself "pro-labor and pro-transit," said neither labor nor management seems to want to change the current law, but the frequency of labor strife in the Bay Area Rapid Transit district has led him to look at the issue. The former Contra Costa County supervisor says that in the 22 years he’s been in elected office, workers have walked off the job or come close four times.

The union voted to walk out again starting Monday, but Gov. Jerry Brown intervened, appointing a panel to look at the issues over the next week. If no deal is reached by then, Brown can ask the courts to impose a 60-day cooling off period while talks continue.

DeSaulnier praised Brown’s handling of the situation and said that given the political climate and the calendar – the Legislature recesses for the year beginning Sept. 13 – a legislative solution was unlikely this year.

“Realistically, I think we’re talking about next year,” he said of any change to the current law. “If I had any interest from either side in doing something sooner, it might be different.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-bart-strike-mta-labor-bay-area-transit-jerry-brown-markdesaulnier-20130805,0,6685056.story

So, this guy is 'pro-labor'? Seems like he was considered a rising star among progressives and now the internet progressives say 'he's not a real Democrat'. Uhuh, righto. In truth he most certainly is a 'real Democrat', this sort of duplicity proving the case. Pay no mind to the rhetoric, know them by their acts.

Top Democrat considering bill to end transit workers' right to strike


SACRAMENTO -- The head of the Senate Transportation Committee praised Gov. Jerry Brown for preventing Bay Area transit workers from walking off the job Monday and said he is still considering legislation that would permanently take away their right to strike.

Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) said in an interview that workers in the Bay Area have rights that few of their colleagues around the state share.

“Of the 10 largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and the Bay Area are the exception,” he said. “All of the other large systems do not allow transit workers to strike.”

DeSaulnier, who called himself "pro-labor and pro-transit," said neither labor nor management seems to want to change the current law, but the frequency of labor strife in the Bay Area Rapid Transit district has led him to look at the issue. The former Contra Costa County supervisor says that in the 22 years he’s been in elected office, workers have walked off the job or come close four times.

The union voted to walk out again starting Monday, but Gov. Jerry Brown intervened, appointing a panel to look at the issues over the next week. If no deal is reached by then, Brown can ask the courts to impose a 60-day cooling off period while talks continue.

DeSaulnier praised Brown’s handling of the situation and said that given the political climate and the calendar – the Legislature recesses for the year beginning Sept. 13 – a legislative solution was unlikely this year.

“Realistically, I think we’re talking about next year,” he said of any change to the current law. “If I had any interest from either side in doing something sooner, it might be different.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-bart-strike-mta-labor-bay-area-transit-jerry-brown-markdesaulnier-20130805,0,6685056.story

So, this guy is 'pro-labor'? Seems like he was considered a rising star among progressives and now the internet progressives say 'he's not a real Democrat'. Uhuh, righto. In truth he most certainly is a 'real Democrat', this sort of duplicity proving the case. Pay no mind to the rhetoric, know them by their acts.

Oh yeah! We don't need no stinkin' workers' party! We got us the Dim-o-crats! Goddamn...

This is from Lenin's WITBD, the second chapter, The Spontaneity of the Masses and the
Consciousness of the Social-Democrats


We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. It would have to be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.[2] The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. In the period under discussion, the middle nineties, this doctrine not only represented the completely formulated programme of the Emancipation of Labour group, but had already won over to its side the majority of the revolutionary youth in Russia.

Hence, we had both the spontaneous awakening of the working masses, their awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theory and straining towards the workers. In this connection it is particularly important to state the oft-forgotten (and comparatively little-known) fact that, although the early Social-Democrats of that period zealously carried on economic agitation (being guided in this activity by the truly useful indications contained in the pamphlet On Agitation,[27] then still in manuscript), they did not regard this as their sole task. On the contrary, from the very beginning they set for Russian Social-Democracy the most far-reaching historical tasks, in general, and the task of overthrowing the autocracy, in particular.

Just thinking that this entire book is very pertinent to us, today.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ii.htm